This sounds like interest, so, back at the computers, Jack and I pull three straight all-nighters. Now the daughter is hanging out with a trucker who’s unwittingly been assigned the nuclear cargo. Missy’s with him in the truck when they are hijacked at a rest stop. He gets shot — we debate over his fate — and she becomes expendable, but maybe irresistible, supercargo. Lots of opportunity for cleavage and noir closeups; heavy breathing in semidarkness — Herbie stuff all the way.
Jack and I exchange high-fives and figure we’re home free. We messenger the script, and sure enough we get called back into his office pronto, but when we start talking about the fine points of the new story, he’s suddenly not sold. That’s Herbie — New England weather in Southern California — the worst of two worlds.
“It’s all right,” he says, “it’s a picture. But I’m thinking chick kidnapping’s been done, know what I mean?”
We do, having hit every cliché in the book as per his own request, because Herbie demands the sure thing. We’d had a script for Cute-As — a genuine talent; we’d had topical suspense — ripped from the headlines, no less, but that was too much novelty for Distracting Productions. So we went the other way and here we sit while he has second thoughts.
“Now,” he says, like he’s just come up with inspiration, “you got a guy kidnapped, man against the elements, that kind of stuff, I’m maybe hearing you.”
Man against the elephants, I think, elephants being a herd of Herbies with loud ties and black shirts and elegant little patent-leather loafers with no socks. I’m getting up from the table before I cross some verbal Rubicon, but Jack’s into the challenge — he later told me he was desperate; he’d maxed all his credit cards and he was ready to run with whatever Herbie threw his way.
“Yeah,” he says, “no heist, no nukes, we heist a guy. A young guy — get the girlie audience.”
Herbie shakes his head. “Stale. You need a guy in his prime. Harrison Ford of a few years ago.”
“More than a few,” I mutter, but Herbie doesn’t notice.
“All right, all right,” Jack goes, “guy in his thirties, maybe.”
“Forties,” says Herbie, who’s closer to fifty, I’m thinking.
That limits the pool of actors — and raises the price, but I can see this is personal for Herbie. He’s got a stake in this, something beyond the usual profit margin for Distracting Productions.
“You want a kidnapping story?” I says. “With a man the victim?”
“Kidnapped but not the victim,” Herbie says. “Not the victim. Where you guys been? Audience surveys pass you by? We’re sick of all these girlie men.”
“Our perpetrators bite off more than they can chew?” This plotline’s been around since O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief.” Not that Herbie reads.
“Yeah. You got it.”
“Diamond merchant, maybe?”
“Too ethnic,” says Herbie.
“But he’s got portable goods on him. There’s your motive.”
“I got to plot this for you?” asks Herbie. “They hold him for ransom—”
“Requires an organization,” says Jack, thinking out loud.
I realize we could use our heist prep scenes if we modified them a little.
“Smart has organization. Dumb’s different. These guys grab him and go. They’re operating seat-of-the-pants,” says Herbie.
“This is a farce?”
I get a look of thunder. Herbie lowers the boom. Reaches for the death ray.
“Look,” he says, “this is real. This is reality, today’s mean streets. Danger on every corner.”
“Yeah, but the plot’s got to be plausible. You got a big executive, ransom-worthy, he’s got the bodyguard, he’s got the chauffeur.”
“Look,” says Herbie, “not all of us run scared. I drive myself unless I gotta find parking.”
Jack gave me a sideways look. I think that was it; right then, I felt the idea. You know, you can feel an idea coming. Like with a story, you don’t have an idea, and then you still don’t have an idea but you have this feeling that one is in the vicinity, that you just have to watch and wait and you’ll find yourself sitting down at the computer and typing in Scene I. That was the sort of feeling I had when Jack looked over at me.
“Gated property, though,” Jack says. “Like yours.”
We’ve been to Chez Herbie, where we were checked and double-checked and scrutinized by little glowing lights — and recorded, too, probably. All this to keep down the covetousness of the general public, which might cast a longing eye on the velvet lawn, the topiaries, the roses, the marble-fronted palace, the soigné assistant, and the shrewish, if very desirable-looking, blond wife.
Herbie gives a snort of exasperation. “You get him at work.”
“Most executive offices are better protected than your private homes,” Jack says.
“There’s always a weak point,” says Herbie.
“Garage?”
“You got it. The monitoring in this one isn’t worth shit. They got a fortune worth of trash compactors and air filters but they’re cutting corners all the time on the monitors.”
“Problem is their car, though,” I say. “And even a rental—”
“Maybe they walk,” says Herbie. “Maybe they drive both cars. Christ, I thought you were the writers and I was the producer. You get this done, I’m going to take a writing credit. You get him in the garage, see, and you wrestle him into the back of the car.”
“Nobody wrestles Harrison Ford into the back of a car,” I observe. “Not in his heyday.”
“Have to whack him good,” says Jack.
“No damage,” says Herbie, “not so soon. Drug him, maybe. Save the blood for later.”
We talk about this awhile. Then Jack and I get our marching orders. Back to the script one more time. We’re really punchy, but we rack our brains and study garages until we finally come up with a story that’s ingenious, real quality, but at the same time, no good. We know all too well what Herbie wants now: man against the elephants, i.e., middle-aged, overweight CEO outwits the lowlife and emerges triumphant.
Still, we need money, we need money now. We put aside a clever, if brutal, plot involving a quick killing and a trash compactor and ditch a script loaded with smart lines to bring our CEO home in glory. We call the office and once again Herbie’s secretary tells us to drop it off at his house.
“I don’t like this,” says Jack. “Something here smells funny. Totally funny. It’s like he wants to keep this out of the office. What’s he got going here that’s not strictly flicks?”
“Beats me,” I says. As it turns out, our professional imaginations didn’t run as fast as Herbie’s. “He doesn’t like it, we pitch our other solution.”
Jack looks at me. “He gets one more chance, this is it.”
And I don’t say anything, though I know what he’s talking about and though silence bespeaks assent. Call it a folie à deux. Or trois — I got to include Herbie somehow.
We get the call late. Herbie’s pleased. The script’s crap, but Herbie’s pleased. As writers, we don’t feel great, but we need the cash.
Jack puts on his lucky Toledo Mud Hens hat, and we hustle off to Distracting Productions as lights come on in the City of the Angels. Upstairs, Herbie is alone, his decorative secretary departed. I don’t see any sign of our script, which I take as a bad sign, but he says, “So you got it done. Not bad at all.”
We’re expecting our contract, but Herbie starts talking about his financing difficulties, certain problems with his stake in a special-effects action flick that ran over budget. “I love this, don’t get me wrong; I love this,” Herbie says.